Death Tour 3: The Ribbing

This is the third and final installment in my Death Tour series, I promise. If you haven’t read the first two you’re missing out. Go read them now this will be hard to follow without doing so. With a trip this bad it’s best not to rib each other, no point making an already bad trip even worse, so for enjoyment we ribbed Tony (the promoter). You usually can’t get away with ribbing a promoter, but fortunately for us Natch had enough stroke to get away with it. When you have 100% job security you can get away with quite a bit. Natch was Tony’s main stay in WFWA. Natch was his booker, his champ, and really the only local talent Tony had, because of this they were like family. Tony was, and still is, like an unwanted uncle, or pain in the @$$ older brother to Natch. (As much as he dislikes him he has to love him, he’s family) Anyway because of this we ribbed the hell out of Tony on this trip.

The ribbing on Tony started when our first ref left and Tony had to step in and become a part of our matches. The second Natch found out Tony would be our ref he decided that the one thing our match had been missing, was a ref bump. We immediately changed our finish to incorporate this new twist, and informed Tony of his bump. For the bump, Natch was going to do a jumping front kick (like the one Steve Blackman does) I would duck and Tony would take the kick. “No f----ing way ya stiff!” was Tony’s response, upon hearing the finish. Tony knew that this spot was designed to stiff him. I pulled Tony aside, being the honest and upstanding guy that I am, and ensured Tony that if Natch stiffed him on the kick; I would receipt Natch with one of my own, right afterwards. With our spot, after the ref went down Natch was to turn and I would super kick him and cover him, but the ref would be down so no count. I told Tony that if Natch stiffed him to scream real loud so I would know the kick was stiff, and could stiff Natch even worse with the super kick. Tony took comfort in this knowing that I was an honest guy. I think he even took pleasure in it figuring that he was tougher than Natch and could take the stiffer shot. I of course told Natch of my plan and told him to tag Tony good, but be sure to complain about the stiff super kick after the match.

When the time came in the match, Natch lets loose with the jumping front kick, I move and Tony goes down screaming like a tortured cat. Natch then turns and gets hit with the world’s safest super kick. Natch sells the kick like I just tagged him, and I’m sure Tony giggled to himself thinking, “That will teach the prick!” After the match Natch bitches to me about stiffing him with the kick, I apologize and assure him it will never happen again. Tony then pulls me aside and thanks me for taking care of him. I tell him it’s my pleasure, and assure him that I’ll keep doing it until Natch learns to lighten up. We did that spot every night for the rest of the trip.

On another night we decided to pants Tony in the ring, during a match. We found his sweats early in the day and cut the drawstring out of them. Even without a drawstring this was no easy task. Tony no doubt knew what we were up to the second he saw that the string in his pants was gone. The first couple of matches tried to get him, but Tony kept his hands by his waist and survived, until Lenny St. Clair stepped up to the plate.

Lenny is a bit of diabolical genius. I wouldn’t say he’s the smartest guy I know, but he does have this mad scientist creativeness about him. Len was working Paul, that night. Paul had Len in the corner giving him the ten punches. When the crowd had proven us wrong, by actually making it to ten, Paul jumped back and Lenny staggered out for a textbook Ric Flair face bump. This is where the genius part comes in, Len staggers out just short of Tony and as he falls he reaches out just slightly with his hand and grabs Tony’s pant on the way down. Both Len and Tony’s pants hit the ground at the same time as the hugest POP of the tour erupts from the looker room. It wasn’t that he had done it; it was that he had done it so smoothly. He surprised everyone, Lenny is, “the God of all ribs”.

Now for the pot-bellied pig rib, I promised you. We had this guy who wrestled as Jethrow Hog and he had the pig. Tony liked gimmicks like this because he always sold Polaroid pictures of fans with the pig. I don’t know who came up with this rib, it was either Natch or the evil genius Lenny, but it’s a good one. After everyone was asleep, now keep in mind we all slept on the floor in the school gyms up here, Natch, Lenny, and Paul spread a trail of cracker crumbs from the pigs cage, across the gym floor, and up to Tony’s crotch. They then let the pig out. As the pig worked it’s way across the gym floor we all laid in our beds, trying to laugh as quietly as possible. When the pig finally made it to Tony, we were dieing. The pig was sticking its’ snout between Tony’s legs trying to get all the cracker crumbs. As funny as this was, the rib could not be called a success unless Tony woke up and realized he was being ribbed. He never did, which forced us to new heights the following night.

On this particular night Natch decided, that with Tony being such a sound sleeper, we should die his hair green while he sleeps. Natch picked up some green food coloring from the Northern Store that afternoon, and when everyone was asleep, it was back to work. A spray bottle was used to spread the food coloring onto Tony’s hair. The problem this time was the color wasn’t really taking, so an audible had to be called. It was decided to try our luck with the pig, one more time. This time, the cracker trail, lead to Tony’s face and into his moustache. Certainly the pig chewing on Tony’s nose would wake him. As Tony wakes up being French kissed by a pig, the rest of us fight, with all we are worth, to not bust out laughing. This is where the rib turns classic, as Tony jumps back away from the pig he puts his hand through his hair and finds the food coloring. For some reason (Tony not being that bright) when he saw that the liquid in his hair was green, he assumed, incorrectly, that the pig had pissed on his head. At the other end of the gym, we all try our best to look like we are sleeping, while laughing hysterically.

Then without warning I hear a loud crack just above my head; I roll over to see Tony with a lighter in one hand and a stick in the other. He is screaming, “Where’s that F---ing Natch! That G-Damn pig pissed on my head!” This time Tony was hot, he was actually try to hit or stab Natch with a stick. We all profess innocence and insist the pig must have gotten out on it’s own. After a long angry debate consisting of a lot of ducking of Tony’s stick, we managed to defuse the situation. Again I think the selling point was my “honest” assurances. My assurances weren’t totally dishonest as I wasn’t actually present during the spreading of the crumbs.

Those were the days. On one hand it was terrible, no money, freezing cold long road trips, and sleeping on the floor. On the other hand it was the best, great guys, no pressure, no one to answer to, and we could just have fun. It wasn’t like Tony could fire us, he liked us too much, and no one else would do this trip for the peanuts he was paying us. It’s not a trip I would ever do again, but looking back I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.